A practical check before using the result
For repeat checks, keep the destination hostname consistent. If your product moved from an old domain to a new one, inspect both separately and record which link the directory still uses. A working redirect may help visitors while leaving your directory record outdated. Give the editor the corrected public URL and product name when requesting an update, and revisit the listing after the change is published.
Check the actual listing page
A directory’s homepage can describe its link policy without proving what appears on your own listing. Start with the exact public page containing your product. Enter the destination website separately so the checker can find anchors to that hostname. It treats www and the bare host as equivalent, but another subdomain remains a different destination. Any path on the matching host can appear in the result.
The result is a snapshot of the HTML received at the displayed check time. Keep the source URL in your submission records. If the page redirects, the result shows the final page that was read. An unavailable response means the inspection did not complete; it should not become a claim that a directory removed your link.
Understand what the labels describe
The tool displays each matching anchor, its text and its rel values. Google documents sponsored, ugc and nofollow in its outbound link guidance. These annotations communicate context about a link. The absence of these annotations is often called dofollow in SEO discussions, but there is no requirement to add a dofollow attribute to an ordinary link.
The inspection also checks generic and Googlebot nofollow directives in the document head and X-Robots-Tag response header. A page-wide rule can matter even when an individual anchor has no qualifying rel value. Links hidden by a hidden attribute or a supported inline style are labeled separately. The checker does not load external CSS or reproduce a search engine’s rendering.
Interpret missing results carefully
A link added after JavaScript runs is outside this inspection. So is a link inside a separate frame, or a tracking URL that later redirects to your website. Compare the result with a manual visit and the page source. If the browser shows a button but the raw HTML contains no direct anchor, record that distinction instead of forcing a yes-or-no conclusion.
For a large page, only the first fifty matching anchors are displayed, while the totals cover all matches in the downloaded HTML. Pages larger than the download limit cannot be inspected. Access restrictions, unsupported response formats and slow servers can also interrupt a check. Try again later or inspect the source manually when that happens.
Use the result in a directory review
Add the listing URL, check date and observed link attributes to the same record as the submission status. A successful submission, a published listing and an unqualified link are different observations. If a provider promised a specific placement, compare the delivered page with that promise. Ask a precise question about the observed result instead of assuming intent from one failed request.
Our directory SEO guide explains why relevance and useful referral traffic deserve attention alongside link attributes. Use the UTM builder when a directory accepts a tagged destination, then compare meaningful actions. A qualified link can still bring relevant visitors; an unqualified one does not prove that a placement benefits your business.
Keep the scope of the check in view
This tool makes a public request from our server. It does not log into accounts, run scripts or send your browser cookies to the destination. Enter public URLs without private access tokens. Requests have limits on time, size and frequency, and redirects are checked before they are fetched. Results are returned to the page rather than saved in the application database.
For your own site’s crawl policy, use the robots.txt generator. For the age of a candidate directory, the domain age checker provides a separate registration observation. Neither check measures authority. Combine direct evidence with audience fit, editorial quality and actual outcomes before deciding where to spend your time.
